The following computer-generated description may contain errors and does not represent the quality of the book:One finds by experience that even those who are accounted well-educated and well-read show a woeful ignorance not only of nature and her varied phenomena, but of the working of their own bodies and the origin of their own species. Some have a dim notion that Darwin "said we came from monkeys" - a statement as inaccurate as unjust; but few seem to possess any clear idea of what Evolution really means. To the suggestion that this ignorance might be easily dispelled, the reply is not seldom given that books upon the subject are too long or too technical, or that "there is no time for such studies."

Similar ignorance and apathy exist with regard to religion, and the grotesque myths of cosmogony and doctrine are swallowed in blind faith. Many people feel that conventional religious beliefs are completely at variance with science; some are frankly sceptical as to the teachings of the ordinary clergyman; but few have the moral courage to voice their doubts, and they see nothing dishonouring in avowing that they "leave all that sort of thing to the parsons, who are paid to look after it." By a number of persons religion, in fact, is professed merely as a business or social asset.